creativity is the bomb - celebrate it with me!

art & inspiration

I’ve loved Youtube for many many years now, but it’s only kind of recently that I’ve discovered the community of artsy youtubers, and I’m so in love. I love the studio vlogs, watching people paint and create and just hearing about their lives as creatives!

So I thought I’d list a few of my favourites that I’ve found so far. These are channels that make me SUPER excited when I see them in my subscription box, and if you have any other recommendations feel free to comment down below, I would love to find more!

Leigh Ellexson

Leigh is just so incredibly good at what she does, and I love everything she creates. She makes studio vlogs, reviews materials and gives us insight into her process. It’s just all in all a wonderful experience to watch her videos, and they always make me want to paint. Also she has a very good doggo and a cute birb that feature in her videos and I love them both. SUBSCRIBE NOW!! Here’s a link to Leigh’s channel.

furrylittlepeach / Sha’an d’Anthes

Sha’an has such a wonderful personality, and her videos are both beautiful and inspiring. She brings you along with her through her days as an artist, and her studio, work and life looks SO COOL. Every video is like a creative adventure, and if you like that you should just go check out her channel. Here’s a link to Sha’an’s channel!

The Average Artist

Steph behind The Average Artist isn’t just insanely creative when it comes to her art, she also comes up with the most amazing ideas for videos. She has created a bunch of challenges for herself that she makes videos of, and they’re just so fascinating. She has a series of videos where she paints the covers of book that have movie covers, which I think is just brilliant. She’s also really funny and I love following along her adventures. Her paper art illustrations are FANTASTIC. Go check her out! Here’s a link to The Average Artist.

Xanthe

Xanthe is that kind of person that you really want to be friends with. She seems so warm and kind AND she’s insanely creative and creates amazing illustrations. Her videos, where she shows her process and tells us about her thoughts about the pieces she makes, are absolutely wonderful and I urge you all to check out her channel! Here’s a link to Xanthe’s channel.

Jordan Clark

Jordan Clark creates such calming videos. There’s something so soft and beautiful about them, and her art journals and illustrations are so pretty. However, while being this calm and wonderful, she also seems adventurous, and I think that combination makes for wonderful videos. I love them all, and you should too!! Here’s a link to Jordan’s channel.

Studio Silvana

Silvana is my most recent discovery when it comes to artsy youtubers, and I only just found her a few days ago, but I’ve almost watched all of her videos already (even the old ones that aren’t even in English, haha). They are absolutely beautiful, and I love her style of illustrating AND editing the videos. I love following along her days, and everything just feels cosy, warm and beautiful in her videos. Here’s a link to Silvana’s channel.

So that was it! I love all of these channels, and I hope you’ve found something you like too! Please tell me if you know of any good artsy youtube channels down in the comment section!

One of my all time favourite thing is finding new artists, as well as writing about them, and I’m planning on incorporating that more here.

So today we’re going to talk a little bit about a visual artist that I absolutely adore. Aeforia, or Alexy Préfontaine, creates digital artwork characterised by wonderful colour palettes and fantastic compositions. There’s just something so atmospheric over all of Alexy’s work, and I’m constantly blown away by what he shares. Let’s take a look!

Okay, I’ve had this in my drafts for I don’t know how long now, but I think it’s time we talk about this video

Xanthe is the talented artist behind my favourite ever channel on Youtube. She makes charming, wonderful and heartwarming content about illustration and creativity. It is always wonderful, and I do recommend her channel to everyone.

A favourite video of hers – which is actually a few months old now (hence the old draft for this post) – is “Reimagining Ophelia”. Guiding us through the process, Xanthe tells us about how she paraphrased John Everett Millais’ famous Pre-Raphaelite painting “Ophelia”.

“Ophelia” is in itself an absolute masterpiece (read more here if you’re curious), but the way Xanthe walks us through both her thoughts on her own artwork and the story behind the original just makes for absolute perfect video for a Youtube-loving art history enthusiast like me.

And I haven’t even started on the finished illustration. I absolutely adore the general expression in Xanthe’s work, it’s utterly charming and it just blows me away with it’s colourful and cheerful feel. The juxtaposition of this with the theme of the painting is just mind-blowing.

I was just kind of watching Youtube yesterday, and came across Sanne and Rosianna’s video where they recommended a few smaller Youtubers. They mentioned a few people that I already knew about, but Sanne recommended Sophie Jerrome – someone I had never even heard of. And when I went to her channel I kind of felt angry at the world for keeping her videos from me for all this time? I think I fell in love with everything about her and the videos she makes within 30 seconds of the first video I watched.

I was obviously drawn to the video with the word “art” in the title first, which is why I started with “put your art on the walls”. AND IT’S SUCH A WONDERFUL VIDEO.

Also, considering she starts the video by saying she’s spending all of her time listening to Harry Potter audiobooks, I just couldn’t not love her?? I’ve been listening to the audiobooks pretty much every evening for 7 years (idk actually but something like that). They got me through months of headaches where I couldn’t watch anything, and while I have had breaks for a few months here and there, I’m super into it right now and this just STRUCK A CHORD with me. (I’m currently on book five, which means it isn’t the best relaxing activity before bed as UMBRIDGE IS SUCH A STUPID TOAD.)

Anyway, back to Sophie. The video above revolves around why artists and creators should put their own art on their walls. She mentions a couple of reasons why it’s actually really good, and is equally eloquent as she is funny when she talks about it all. And I agree, you should be decorating your home with your own stuff. It will give you confidence, it will look cute and it might inspire you. It’s amazing.

I obviously spent a good hour or two watching her videos last night. In this one she talks in such a beautiful way about taking pride in being a Hufflepuff. She talks about the importance of being kind, and “not just listening for a litany of ‘here’s how busy and clever I am'”. (“Tell it to your LinkedIn profile, not me”)

And then last but CERTAINLY NOT LEAST OMG she’s such an intelligent person who just so perfectly discusses things like the female gaze in regards to Charli XCX’s video for “Boys” and One Direction with puppies. JUST WATCH IT I promise you won’t regret it.

Just all in all a wonderful human being and video maker and I’m so glad I found her. Now I just need to become her best friend.

A while back I discover a lovely class by Anna Sokolova on Skillshare called “The Art of Monotype”. I had never heard of this technique before, but was really excited by the looks of the thumbnail. So I watched it, and was SO EXCITED. Like look at this

I’m aiming not to give away too much about the technique in this post, which might sound weird. But I really enjoyed Anna’s class, and I would urge you to watch that instead if you want to learn. I’m not going to undermine a fellow artist who has put so much work into a class by giving away the information for free!! But basics are that you paint on glass and then press the paper against the glass. I used the glass from a random frame that we had, so I didn’t have to get anything new for this technique!

And well, turns out monotype is pretty hard. (Partly, I think, because I didn’t have quite the right paper.) I ended up covering the entire table I was working on with my attempts.
I’m not gonna show you all of them, but here are a few. I do like the gradients it sometimes creates, and I really like the way it turned out when I poured salt on it. (Last one.) But none of them really had the PIZAZZ I was looking for.
I decorated two I liked with some penwork and brush strokes but I think it kind of ruined them so I’m quite upset about that haha. :(I actually ended up preferring the way the paint moved on top of the glass and taking pictures of it for a while, haha. And also the result on the glass after I had pressed the paper against it. And then I actually moved from watercolor to using my new Golden High Flow Acrylics and lots of water, which gave me the base for this. Which I then decorated a little bit with some violet watercolour (which was too violet for the camera that day which is why it looks ultramarine in the bottom right corner) and some marker! I need to cut off the edges of this or something because they’re messy af, but I actually really like this one, and I wouldn’t have been able to achieve the gradients in the blue and pink without monotype, and I think I’m going to use it for that in the future.

Okay, I realise I didn’t really sell this technique very well in this post, just telling you about my mistakes haha. BUT you can create really amazing art with this, and most importantly it’s SO MUCH FUN. I always enjoy techniques where I don’t really have full control, and this is a perfect example! In the class, Anna shows us how to create a few different styles through monotype and recommends materials and stuff, so if you want more information you should head on over there. You can also follow Anna on Instagram here!!

It’s been a few weeks since I discovered Leigh Ellexson now. I think I found her while just looking around at sketchbook tours and she showed up in my recommended videos. I absolutely fell in love with everything about her videos pretty much right away, and I recommend you all to go watch her sketchbook tour here. SO MANY CUTE CATS and pretty colours.

Anyway, as she mentions in that video, the sketchbook she has finished is a Mossery mixed media sketchbook, and I was just like casually intrigued that time simply because it looked so prettyyyy. And then I watched her Mossery review and was like MY GOD I NEED ONE.

Mossery is a sationery brand based in Kuala Lumpur, and they make planners, sketchbooks and notebooks from sustainable materials and it’s all just so freaking wholesome and beautiful. Here’s a link to Mossery’s website. I kind of really wanted to buy a planner too, because they seem so nice, but I ended up only getting the sketchbook because honestly I prefer Google Calendar + Bullet Journal to stay organised at the moment. You can get the books customised with fancy metallic letters on the front. I wanted to write my full name but it was too long, which is FOREVER THE CASE WITH MY STUPID NAME. Ugh. BUT LOOK AT IT. SO PRETTY. There are a lot of different covers, and as I’ve understood it they come and go, so I’m so happy that this pink and blue gradient was available when I purchase mine because it’s so perfect I want to cry. It was delivered inside two layers of box, but I fell in love with this inner one. It’s so pretty??? It was also delivered with a little ruler, which I placed inside the little pocket at the front! Then there’s a page for filling in your information! I haven’t done this yet because I was too eager to start painting in it. As you can see it’s spiral bound, and while it isn’t optimal for pretty spreads it’s actually quite lovely as it doesn’t try to close itself constantly. The following pages feature boxes and circles where you can fill in your goals/purpose and things you want to improve. I just find this so brilliant, as it makes you a little bit more thoughtful about what you want to do in this particular sketchbook.

I haven’t filled it in yet, but I’m planning on writing something about experimenting and being playful. I’ve watched enough sketchbook tours to put extreme amounts of pressure on myself when it comes to something like this, so I think it’d be good to remind myself in this kind of “proper” way that my actual goal is to have fun and try new things.The paper inside is 224 gsm, and it has 38 sheets/76 pages. I actually sat down and just started painting right after I had opened it, just so that I wouldn’t be too precious about it. The paper buckled a little bit (it isn’t really thick enough for the amount of water I was using) but it didn’t start curling up entirely and it was still fine to work on, so it’s actually quite great!

I have tried painting in the Canson Mixed Media Art Book (which is also 224 gsm) in the same way, but it has left the paper actually curling up so it’s like a 90 degree curved paper, which isn’t optimal for trying to get the paint to dry like you want, so I was pleasantly surprised that this paper was so much better even though the weight is the same! The grain is pretty fine too, which I like.

Though – as Leigh also mentioned in her review – the roughness is different on the left page (the “back” of the paper) than it is on the right, which a way smoother left page. I’m not really bothered by this, but it does affect the process a little bit, and might be an issue for some!
But I’m just enjoying it so much. And it makes me happy because it’s pretty (I’m a simple person), even though I’m scared I’ll get paint on the cover!!! I already have, actually, but I want it to stay as clean as possible, which isn’t really my way in life in general…. Hehe.

I keep finding new and amazing artists recently. THERE ARE JUST SO MANY GREAT ONES OUT THERE.

My latest favourite is Irish photographer Erica Coburn. There is just such an intense dreaminess in her images. And the liiiiiiiiight. Ahh. It soothes me. Let’s take a look!There’s something about all of Erica’s work that makes me think of spring. Might just be because it’s spring right now. There’s warmth and safety and the smell of grass. The colour palette is soft and natural but still out of this world, and it’s just so hard to describe! Basically it’s all so soft and pretty and I just can’t take it.

Music is an important part of my creative process. I always listen to music while creating, and what I listen to greatly influences what I create. So today I thought I’d share with you a few songs that I’ve been listening to a lot while creating recently!

ionnalee – Samaritan

I found out a few days ago (!!) that Jonna Lee (aka iamamiwhoami) had released something new as ionnalee. AND I DIDN’T KNOW. AND IT’S BRILLIANT. I could’ve listened to this for a whole month but haven’t! I’m very upset! Anyway, the audiovisual above made me confused and emotional as usual with Jonna Lee haha. <3

Jonathan Johansson – Old News

Jonathan Johansson falls under my top ten when it comes to music. I just love him so much. (Lebensraum is probs my most listened to album.) I haven’t listened to Love & Devotion that much yet but Old News has been running on repeat quite a lot. Heh.

Vérité – Somebody Else

This is a cover of a 1975 song! I actually really like the original too, but this cover is just so sooooooooothing and lovely.

alt-J – In Cold Blood

Okay, this video is like an stroboscopic nightmare, but the song is really amazing. I love alt-J.

Oh Wonder – Ultralife

I’ve realised I’ve picked songs from a few of my most listened to artists and bands throughout this post, and this is no exception. Oh Wonder is just amazing, and I love Ultralife. It makes me happi.

And that was it! ionnalee’s Samaritan is probs the one I’ve listened to the most out of these, but they’re all quality songs. Yup.

So yeah! The cat’s out of the bag (hehehehe) – the theme for Monthly Makers this month is Animals. I thought I’d show you a few things I’ve made previously that are inspired by animals! A lot of it is pretty old so it’ll be a fun little throwback!I made antler brooches a few years ago! Still love these, although I currently have no idea where they are. :) And then last year I found a dragon in a bonfire!!!The human species is a kind of animal, so portraits work too! Here’s a self portrait/double exposure!Uh is jellyfish an animal…………………………. Whatever, they look good in pictures! I might actually take some pictures of my Lumos for this theme.Or some other cat! This picture is from almost ten years ago. This is our neighbours cat Sigge. Birds work too!Speaking of birds – here’s a raven in paper and an embroidery space dove!A few years ago I spent a looooooot of time making these felted animals! Still cute.Most importantly though, this is the perfect theme to embrace the cute little beans on a kittypaw. Maybe with a camera, or with a scanner like here.

Also, I just kept thinking about Miike Snow’s song Animal while writing this post, so I decided I’d make a playlist with animal related songs/bands/artists. Maybe it’ll inspire someone!

For those of you who didn’t know, this month is also National Poetry Writing Month, and you’re meant to write a poem a day but I think we could all embrace it by writing poems about animals this month! Well at least I wanted to make you all aware that it’s a perfect opportunity to try out poetry! Animals can be so symbolic in poems, so I’d say it’s a perfect opportunity.

I don’t have much experience with poetry, but find it easier when I have some rules to follow and if what I’m writing has to be short. A good example of this is a haiku but I would also like to recommend Wirrow’s challenge for 3×4 poetry on Hitrecord. Blackout poetry is great too.

Okay, prepare yourselves to be overwhelmed by the world of poetry and visual art. While I was crushing on Noor Unnahar’s art before I started writing this, it’s nothing compared to what I feel after looking through her stuff to find my favourites. I’m completely overwhelmed. I almost screamed out loud. “They’re all my favourites! What the hell! This girl is brilliant!” She combines so many things in her creations, and it’s sosososo beautiful.

Which is why I am overwhelmed by Noor Unnahar today.

Because let me tell you – we’re going on an adventure through the land of visual art and poetry today. I was going to say something about how this is some kind of amazing poetry that is both art and poetry, but isn’t all poetry art? This is something more than words though. Noor Unnahar has created her own kind of mixed media poetry. It’s free verse meets art journaling meets photography. Most importantly, though, it moves me to the core.

About Noor Unnahar:

Noor Unnahar is a 19 year old Pakistani girl, but really she’s just so many things. She is a writer and an artist, but she’s also a blogger + YouTuber (a super pro one – look at this work with me-page omg), a blog designer and a business student. Her blog is about books, art, lifestyle and design and she likes tea and statement necklaces. I’m sure she is many more things that I don’t even know about, but one thing is for sure – she’s a poet.

The first one in this post reallyreally got me when I first saw it on Twitter, I mean, I could write an essay about what it means that she’s burning the poem itself but I’m not gonna. (I’m making you go back and look at it again now, idk if that’s proper blogging but DEAL WITH IT) The one about kindness (no 1 of the two above) made me cry a little bit, and the bathroom tiles give me hope. Which isn’t a sentence I ever thought I would say.
“Make your name something completely, terrifyingly, beautifully out of this world” is my new motto. Poetry + embroidery + floral photography = be still, my beating heart. She really makes me want to start art journaling, too. It looks amazing. (I’d probs do it digitally like my friend and fellow artist Kelly did!)

So yeah. I could’ve made this post twice as long really. I just love this so much. And I’m kinda jelly of the flowers and green leaves she seems to have around her. Everything looks rotten here still, but soon. SOON.

Aaaanyway, please check out Noor’s stuff – she is truly inspiring! Here’s her blog Noor’s Place, her YouTube and Instagram – but she’s on other social media and you’ll find the links to those on her blog!

Make your name something completely, terrifyingly, beautifully out of this world.

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